some beginner arena notes (quad boxing 4 shammy)

[dizz]

Always find the posts here entertaining so I thought I'd contribute some thoughts on my first few experiences in arenas as a multiboxer. If you have any tips or thoughts, I definitely appreciate feedback.

This is my 2nd week of being 70 with my 4 shammies, on the first week I tried arenas with some dps friends just to get some points. 5v5, 4 shammy partnered with a newly 70 lock for 5 games, and a epic’d mage for 5 games. Pure failure, no wins. Without any heals we all went down fast. Keep in mind I have no trinkets, and I’m still in mostly level 60 blues. So yeah, kind of expected.

This week I changed it up and brought a very well geared disc/holy priest in. What a difference. Started at a pitiful 1350 rating, got it up to 1411 after 11 games, 7 wins and 4 losses. Much better. The priest would grab their attention mostly, by showing himself out in the open on his mount, usually hidden behind a seperate pillar. 2 or 3 would rush for the priest, while I’d burn down things from a distance. This mostly worked.

Here’s my notes:

1. Still trying to figure out the kill order, which definitely seems different for a shammy multi boxer than for a normal team. Right now it seems to be warrior, rogues, mages, locks, hunters, shadow priests, healers. I’m not sure this is totally right yet, definitely up for suggestions. If there is 1 healer, I definitely save it for last. If there are 2 healers, then I think taking one of them out fast is the best approach, as I had a very hard time bursting anyone with that setup. For healers I tend to prioritize cloth/leather/plate.

2. Fears - Warriors can rush in and shout, priests can fear, locks can fear. With 3 staggered tremor totems (+1 earthbind) this isn’t THAT bad and I don’t think I’d use a trinket for getting out of fears if I had it, but it’s still annoying and stops all of the dps.

3. Some really bad damage dealing tactics against me include: Frost novas + AOE – Ugh. This is painful. A mage would run in, frost nova, blink behind me, and blizzard. I would probably use my trinket for this situation. Seed of Corruption is also pure evil.

4. Totems I use currently: 3 staggered tremor, 1 earthbind, 3 healing, 1 poison cleans, 4 grounding, and the fires I tend to stick with fire nova when appropriate. I may start using magma totem more often to expose rogues sooner (At least I think it would...)

5. Shocks I use: 1 frost shock for slowing, 2 flame shock for dots incase the burst doesn't finish them off, and 1 earth shock. I'm contemplating just switching out the flame shocks to earth though, as the additional dot damage is only minorly helpful (after all, spike damage is the focus here, right?)

5. Melee and mages seems to habitually run behind me. What a pain for line of sight. If I back-step the leader, I can have the 3 followers all turn around (assuming they’re not frost nova’d) and at least have 3 dps facing target that way. In guild wars I think there was a button to turn 180 degrees, that would be really helpful here.

6. Rogues seem to take down stuff fast. Almost always if I get a rogue on me, I will throw down fire nova totems, shock em, CL and chain heal, and hope my heal gets off in time. That’s about all I can do to preserve my team. Fortunately in our games I noticed the rogues going towards the healer first, who’s quite capable of dealing with them (and it’s helpful for me since I can kill from a distance much better.)

7. One game I managed to get all of them down except the healer, and by that time I actually went oom! It would help to grab some stars tears for a quick drink. (I did win the match, just had to wait for water shield + mana spring totem to give me enough for a lightning bolt.)

8. It’s absolutely critical that I am able to quickly change leaders. I have f1-f4 set up to switch leaders instantly. A few games we won with my original leader dead. If one dies you should realize it’s not game over and should hop over to the next character super fast. There are some tactics I've been thinking about regarding using decoy leaders to at least throw them off at the start.

9. Targeting was chaotic at best. I need to get better at using Proximo. I tend to tab-target a lot, which just causes all sorts of failures. Given my being Tauren + giganticized with bloodlust, I found it difficult even fully zoomed out to see anything. I think in an ideal situation I would have full situational awareness, but once my guys start moving and people get behind me, I lose track of enemy positioning as well as where my priest is and whos attacking him. (and then panic ensues as I start mashing the tab button. :wacko: )

10. I keep forgetting to hit bloodlust. Partially it’s a result of the keyboard layout with the button being too far away, but also it’s because I’m new to the skill.

11. Having a priest really helped for CC as well, since they can throw out an initial fear bomb. At least in lower rank fights the teams tend to not have trinkets so it disorients them for long enough to take down at least one or two of them.

12. There were a couple of teams where the healers were keeping up with the damage I was dishing. The tactic that worked well was to switch between a couple targets. I'd knock one down to 60% and then switch. Their healer would heal the first but by that point I was bursting another. It seems to be very important to get at least one target down as quickly as possible.

13. Do NOT fall for these common tactics: paladin runs in and bubbles (often causing you spend your EM + NS on this.) warrior with a shield uses spell reflect. Shaman runs in only to drop a grounding totem before your CL goes off. I know I will fall for them again inch: , but it's good to be conscious about them and try to avoid them.

[TMNT]

Well my Shams arnt 70 yet but on the TTR i played over 100 games, figuring stuff out.

-Pally healer is BY FAR the best way you can go. No doubt i played with a 2200+ raited Pally and priest (same person) and the with the pally we won time and time again.

-EM/NS Don't blow it right away! I start off with some lightning bolts first then as a finisher do EM/NS

-2 Healers are hard, always kill one first, i found this to be a priority.

-Rouges....i....hate....lol there so gay.

Thats all i can help out for now.
Again its all about how YOU play and what you find to be the best.
More tips and comments would be nice on this setup.

Keep this up
later
-Team Tox

[Quix]

Just wanted to say thanks for the detailed writeup. I don't have any suggestions yet as my shammies are 68, but I highly encourage others to post thier thoughts & successes/failures.

I am really curious what type of healer others have had luck with? I have a resto shamman friend that really wants to heal me when I hit 70, but I wonder if that's as smart as some other choices.

[Toned]

Personally I feel that if you aren't 99.9% sure your EM/NS/CL isn't going to be a killshot don't use it. If they aren't ready for it 2x LB + 1 CL + an earth shock can drop a target without having to burn your cooldowns (heroism is over powered btw). I personally would go for their DPS first I can always kill healers they won't heal me to death, but if I run OOM the dps will kill me. (water shield + mana totem > healers trying to do mediocre dmg when it gets down to the last 1 or 2 people). My win % was about 50% with me doing 5x shaman by myself and I dropped down into the 1300s at first trying to figure out my strat. Once I introduced my paladin friend we had a 75-80% win ratio, unfortunately we only played for 1 week then I rerolled horde shamans.
My priorities were usually:

Warrior
Rogue/Hunter
Any other DPS besides SL Locks
SL Locks
Healers
(teams with shadow priests their shadow priest would die first or 2nd depending on the position of their warrior).

[Zoroaster]

For targetting I would suggest a mod such as Proximo. When you are running in run your mouse over the opposing team, when you mouse over a player it will add their name and a health bar, with their HP% at the end. You can target the players by clicking on their respective name/HP bar. Proximo cannot add targeting bars once you have entered combat, so usually rogues/druids will show up, but you can't target them, since you don't actually see them until you've entered combat.




Other then that your experiences sound very similar to mine. I run a 5v5 with my 3 mages and a pally/warrior. We avoid any class that can go 'immune', pally (bubble) and mage (iceblock) are the 2 main ones, rogues also fall into this category, they have CoS and possibly Cheat Death. Basically we try to burn down 1 target with the warrior charging, me popping 3x Water Elementals and Icy Veins. My preferred targets are Hunters, Priests, Shaman, and Warriors. Druids can just turn and run like hell and since most Warlocks are SL they just don't take as much damage. Once we get better I might have to stop targeting warriors on the initial rush, it works pretty well now since I can get them in combat and then burn them down, most warriors will go into zerk stance if they are in combat and at range, so they can intercept, bad move when lots of magical damage is coming your way though

[Ellay]

Kill order for me is:

Fire Mage
Frost Mage/ Ele Shaman
Hunter
Ret Paly / Warrior / Enhancement Shaman
Priest / Non Cheat Death Rogue
Warlock / Cheat Death Rogue
Paladin / Resto Shaman / Druid

Basically take out what the largest threat to you is in terms of damage, and go from there.

[fender967]

How do you deal with people moving around you and behind you? Do you just back up with the main and then turn him around?

[Gallo]

How do you deal with people moving around you and behind you? Do you just back up with the main and then turn him around?

No fine sir, you must bind the "turn left" and "turn right" keys on all your characters to 2 buttons so that you can spin them all. Much better than turning them using /follow

[Quix]

How do you deal with people moving around you and behind you? Do you just back up with the main and then turn him around?

No fine sir, you must bind the "turn left" and "turn right" keys on all your characters to 2 buttons so that you can spin them all. Much better than turning them using /follow

QFT,, Bind your turning to arrow keys or whatever, something other than what you normally turn with on your main.

The perfect example, is if a mage , Frost Nova's you, & runs behind you, you can't turn your team with follow while stuck in FN.Just turn them all around & own face.

Don't forget to hit your follow button when done. keyboard turning is obviously slow, & not somthing you should do in solo play, but much better than not having an option. If I can move, I just mouse turn & run through my alts. This is good for when you can't do that

[fender967]

What about melee or warlocks running back and forth through you/around you?